Swarm of PAVs | Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt

Highway-in-the-Sky display | lis.epfl.ch

myCopter-Projekt

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Novel Human-Machine Interfaces for Personal Aerial Vehicles

Prevailing congestion problems with ground-based transportation and the anticipated growth of traffic present a major challenge in developing solutions that combine the best of ground- based and air-based transportation. The optimal solution could include the creation of a personal aerial transportation system that can overcome the problems associated with current modes of transport. Within the myCopter project, we are working on technologies to support novice pilots with intuitive and user-friendly human-machine interfaces for Personal Aerial Vehicles (PAVs). Therefore, we evaluate control behaviour and a pilot’s psychophysiological state in basic and generalizable experimental tasks, e.g., to investigate how pilots change their control strategy and neuromuscular behaviour while conducting an active control task with different kinds of haptic feedback. Furthermore, we look at the implementation of perspective flight-path displays such as a Highway-in-the-Sky display, and providing additional support in form of haptic cues generated with control-loaded pilot input devices. Finally, we investigate higher-level attentional issues associated with perspective flight-path displays, such as attentional tunnelling and workload.We use the CyberMotion Simulator to systematically study human behaviour in realistic simulations of PAV flight scenarios by providing participants in experimental studies of closed-loop control tasks with visual, motion and haptic feedback. We also investigate flight scenarios in which pilots navigate their vehicle through a swarm of PAVs and how they interact with other traffic.